About this Research Topic

Background

Man invents tools that modify the environment and in turn, the tools shaped the man that invented them. The forward-moving loop between technology and society is visible in the invention of the heavy plough in the 10th century, which led to a population boom in Europe in the invention of the printing press that shattered the monopoly of the Church on knowledge in the 15th century and in the 19th century, in the invention of the radio and other mass media that made possible the emergence of national public spheres. We are now experiencing another technological revolution. Mobile computers—phones, wearables, and VR/AR devices, to name a few—have entered society and modified how people interact with each other We are living through an expansion of social reality that has generated unprecedented amounts of data about users at all levels of the human experience—from food preferences to romantic choices for partners to preferred destinations for vacations. The idea of a pristine offline world, almost a mythical state of nature, is as naive as the fear that we will only live in a digital space.

The merging of offline and online worlds has created the space for the emergence of a new domain of knowledge that we are labeling Applied Social Science. Practitioners in this new domain are scattered through a web of tech companies and some academic halls. They spend their time directly or indirectly shaping the behavior of millions of people by applying their disciplinary knowledge of Psychology, Sociology, Economics, and Political Science. Yet, in large part, the work of these men and women remains siloed within a given company or it is published in esoteric disciplinary journals of limited reach. The stunted circulation of ideas limits a full understanding of the social transformation produced by the new tools of social interactions and creates limits to the expansion of new expertise. This is the premise of this Research Topic that explores how social science knowledge is being applied in shaping the interactions of millions of people. Below, we provide some examples of research questions and domains of interest. The list is much longer than what is presented here. Thus take what is listed as illustrative rather than exhaustive:

1. Have patterns of connections changed since the rise of social media, and if so, what are the consequences of these changes for social isolation and resilience especially in the face of crises (be it pandemics, wars, and climate change)?

2. Have digital tools, such as online dating, reshaped social stratification apparent in marriage and family formation?

3. Has the sharing economy, e.g., the availability of crowdsourced renting and ride-sharing contributed to eliminating biases or amplified them? How can we build algorithms that promote fairnesses?

4. Have wearables had an impact on population health allowing users to keep track of their health-related behaviors and consumption? How can we leverage AI tools to create healthy habits?

5. What have we learned about segregation by income and race and ethnicity from mobile-phone location data and how can ML be used to guide interventions for reducing segregation?

6. Has social media contributed to political polarisation? Can we use AI that promotes exposure to diverse opinions that can change minds at scale?

Keywords: Computational Social Sciences, Social Network Analysis, AI tools, Mobile Data, Digital Tools

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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